A gold-plated gun given to one of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen has been seized at Heathrow Airport, it has been reported.
The Kalashnikov AK47 found yesterday was similar to the one uncovered at Uday Hussein’s palace in Baghdad last week, according to a newspaper report. The loaded machine gun was discovered along with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, six bayonets and a sniper rifle in packages marked as computer equipment, the newspaper claimed.
A spokesman for Customs and Excise said: “A quantity of arms was found at Heathrow and investigations are ongoing.” No further details were given.
The newspaper said the arms are believed to have been stolen for the US black market in war trophies. An unnamed source told the paper that the gun was loaded, bubble wrapped along with a spare magazine and was bound for an address in the US but was picked up by an X-ray machine.
The report said the guns arrived on a British Airways flight from Kuwait and was found yesterday at the DHL Terminal Four cargo transfer depot which was evacuated and police alerted. However Richard Goodfellow, spokesman for BA said their security personnel knew nothing about the find and the carrier had stopped flights from Kuwait last month.
He said: “We don’t fly from Kuwait. Flights to there were suspended a month ago around mid-March. We know nothing about this.”
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$22C1QCBBH5ULDQFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2003/04/18/ugun.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/04/18/ixportaltop.html
By: Bhoy - 19th April 2003 at 11:14
Originally posted by Ren Frew
I work in the media Bhoy. You’re confusing “media bollocks” with journalistic bollocks. Those of us at the “better” end of the business are always being tarred with the same brush as that applied to our less diligent cousins at the “hack” end of the spectrum.:DI thenck yoo :rolleyes:
I’ll continue to tar you with that brush as long as you work alongside your fellow (alleged) Buddie who has a weekly column in the Daily Mail… :p
Whey hey hey!
By: T5 - 18th April 2003 at 22:49
I don’t know what to make of this story. I don’t believe that most things in the media are 100% true, but I would believe more of what I would read from the Telegraph (an example Broadsheet) to the Sun (a tabloid).
Perhaps the guns came in on a British Airways flight last month but they just failed to mention it? DHL then lost the parcel (which these companies do all the time) and recovered it again yesterday and wanted to look inside and just by pure coincidence, it was a gold plated gun belonging to one of Saddam’s buddies.
By: Ren Frew - 18th April 2003 at 20:02
I work in the media Bhoy. You’re confusing “media bollocks” with journalistic bollocks. Those of us at the “better” end of the business are always being tarred with the same brush as that applied to our less diligent cousins at the “hack” end of the spectrum.:D
I thenck yoo :rolleyes:
By: Bhoy - 18th April 2003 at 19:50
:rolleyes: more unfounded media bollocks.
If they can’t even get details like BA flying from Kuwait right, what credibility to the whole story?
Surprising, though, that the story should have come from a broadsheet…
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April 18, 2003 at 7:20 pm